nishatalitha

You know you're sick when the husband of one of your lawyers calls her and after you've put the phone through to her and they've talked, she comes and tells you that her husband thinks you sound like you should be at home in bed. If I feel this bad next week, I'm going to the doctor.

I was really busy today and I only remembered a couple of hours after I got home that one of the other LAs had volunteered to help me if I got overwhelmed. As it is, I could have easily stayed for another hour tonight to get caught up a bit, but didn't feel up to it.

Don't know if I'll get to practice tomorrow morning. I want to - I need to practice my curving throws because I've been shocking at them the last couple of games, but I don't want to do any of the running around. Considering my alarm clock is dying, I think I'll see what time I wake up on my own.

There are Early Cheer in a vase on my desk. I can't currently smell them except when I lean in close, but I know if I could smell stuff, I'd be able to smell them and that would be nice.

Bed soon.

Just had an absolutely awesome game of Ultimate against Vic Samuri Pizza Cats. They'd brought along a whole lot of newbies and we had one sub, so it was suggested that we borrow a couple of their players and then everyone would get a reasonable amount of game time. We had a girl and a guy from their beginners group - had played for about a month or so, they said. Great disc handling skills and the guy had pretty good cutting skills as well.

And it was fun! This is what Ultimate is about for me - the joy of the game, with the running, the catching and throwing and the working together as a team.

I'm back at work this week and am madly busy catching up from when I was away and preparing for DMH to go away at the end of this week on Outward Bound - the same course on which knightclubbing got the shingles. Fortunately, PJS (my most labour intensive author) is in Auckland yesterday and today for the PL NZLS conference, so that made things a little easier.

Jack suffered a catastrophic failure to the C Drive, the systems harddrive - something that would have been a lot worse if I didn't also have the D Drive where all my data is stored. So I had Alessan around on Sunday afternoon and after a number of attempts at accessing the drive (including inserting it into the case of a portable harddrive and trying to read it off a laptop) and long after I'd given up any hope of regaining the information on it, the C Drive was wiped and rebuilt - Windows and everything reinstalled. So everything feels shiny and new, even though it's still Jack. Took six or seven hours and poor Alessan was exhausted and headachy by the time he went home, but his efforts are muchly appreciated.

I'm still wired, but am working on getting to bed before midnight again. Have managed every night this week so far and would like to complete the set. Got to the gym yesterday and today, too. Not planning to go tomorrow, but Thursday/Friday instead.

Well, the wedding present is finished, barring two french knots and assuming that all the names are correct. The corners are all relatively tidy and I'm quite pleased how it turned out. I will be carting it around with me to show off for the next couple of weeks and hopefully get photos and then I shall wander on up to Walrus Gallery and ask about framing and lacing. I think I will try lacing this one myself. Although it might have to wait until May, so I can take it up north with me for Dad's 50th to show off, but that might be cutting timing a bit fine.

So, as I planned, I am back to the nice uncomplicated counted crossstitch, Mirabila's Maidens of the Seasons (Autumn and Winter) only to find that during my break from it, or in the period since I last had to buy the main framing colour, that they've changed the dye run slightly. I don't want to have to undo everything I've done so far, but I might have to. I'll certainly have to undo the entire section that the new colour is directly next to. The more I work on this, the more I am convinced that when I bought the linen, I was given the area I asked for, but not in the proportions I wanted. I feel like I have nearly a foot extra at the ends and that it's tight at the top and the bottom. Still very pleased with the blue of the background.

Dirty Creature had a bye tonight for the last game of the season, but I came along anyway, wanting a run around and ended up playing for Hammerhands (Dirty Hands) against Happy Creature. I had fun. I played in my Kathmandu work shirt and was actually cooler in it than I am in my cotton creature t-shirt. Maybe I should investigate this sports fabric thing. I also purchased my first disc, one of the Ultimate Creature ones, which makes me happy.

Then I came home, had dinner, and watched Dancing With the Stars, where the true entertainment is hanging out with my flatmates and laughing, not the show itself. We all have a weakness for dancing shows. But the costumes!

No class this week, so I get to start at 8.30am and have hour long lunch breaks. This is so strange that I have no idea what to do with them. Maybe I'll go to the library tomorrow - I was reading an interesting article on Bette Davis at the gym this morning and her biography or autobiography could be quite interesting, and I keep meaning to try Liz Williams Snake Agent series - a few people have generally recommended it to me.

Does anyone in Wellington have any suggestions where to get massage oil from other than the Body Shop? They're out of bergamot and I don't like the other scents they have.

The first time I got this, I was something like 6.45am, which is an hour I loathe being awake at, despite this being a relatively frequent occurance, so I tried again. Have got this twice now.

Work is going well. I'm the only LA there today and tomorrow and I seem to be coping well enough. I've even caught up on some electronic filing - there's not nearly as much of a backlog for PJS now.

Am going to get my eyes checked in a couple of weeks as I think the long-sightedness is getting worse; it certainly is taking me longer to refocus my eyes when I suddenly change what distance I'm looking at something.

On Tuesday, I played for One Crew Over the Cuckoo's Nest instead of Dirty Creature, because the Crew were shorter on people than we were (and because the only non-creature t-shirt I had was the one I wore to the gym that morning and I wasn't prepared to let anyone else wear it). It's the first time I've played a league game for a non-Creature team and it felt very strange not to be in a bright colour. That being said, I played all but the first two points and I played relatively well. I was pleased with how I did and while I was tired at the end, I wasn't completely exhausted and could have probably played another couple of points before saying that it was my turn to have a point off.

I would like whoever came up with the bright idea of having a five minutes whistle to be taken out and shot. I had no idea that such a thing had been introduced, was rather thrown by it and as direct result think it's a stupid idea and should be discontinued. I thought it was the end of the game. It felt like the end of the game - and if they're going to use something like that they should at least start on time!

Playing against the Creatures, I once more noticed that things went a lot better when there were short passes and the disc was worked up and down the field. People seem to be cutting pretty well and disc handling skills (except in the end zone for some reason) are good. It's just the long passes don't seem to work very well most of the time and work brilliantly the rest of the time. I suppose that's a matter of learning how to judge the game and the players. Although as house_monkey pointed out later, a long pass for some people is a short pass for others and so on.

I do seem to have messed up my ankle a bit; the one I sprained last year. I think it's a combination of the high heels I wore to the wedding and the long game on Tuesday. I know I twinged it on Tuesday at least once and at the wedding, I kept getting the right heel stuck in a crack at the edge of the floor which would then wrench my ankle. I'm going to be in sneakers when I can be for a while, I think; leave the gym until Monday (not that I went today anyway); and take it easy at practice on Saturday. Walking in sneakers seems to be okay, but I'll be wearing the flattest shoes I own to work tomorrow. My shoe heels have been getting progressively lower all week.

I have hair! It looks awesome. Currently it's straight, but that's only going to last until I have a shower at the gym tomorrow morning. The colour is going to last a lot longer and it's great. Very different and contrasting. I haven't told my mother what colour the streaks are and I think she's dreading something terrible which she'd have to make me fix before my brother gets married. Not purple, alas, because my hairdresser couldn't find a royal purple that would fade well. But she is a fantastic hairdresser and I am really happy with the results.

Am down to eight and a half squares of black, so hopefully my brother's will turn up soon. They have set a date now - 1 February 2008 (and I am vaguely disturbed that I wanted to bold that for a deadline as per the style guide at work). But that means I have two and a half months to stitch and frame a sampler. Not that it looks remotely hard, but I'd've rathered a bit more time.

The team secretary is away again all this week, but is joining us for our team lunch tomorrow. I should be nicely busy for the rest of the week.

tamarillow's new couch arrives on Saturday and so the Sallies are coming tomorrow to pick up the old lounge sweet, a box of cups and miscellany, possibly the old stereo and about a dozen bags of old clothing, since clearly this necessitated a wardrobe clear out. I have space in my drawers and wardrobe now. It's quite a novelty. Now I need to buy clothes - or will, once I've lost a bit more weight, because I have enough things to go on with, more or less.

The gingerbread I made which looked absolutely gorgeous after it came out of the oven, managed second place in the work bake-off this morning, which means that I get to bake again in a couple of weeks. I am currently debating between:

Lemon, cranberry and poppy-seed cupcakes; and
Italian parsley & coriander pesto, hummus, olive oil and freshly baked bread

Both would do nicely. Or I might do something else entirely.

I'm quite stoked about placing, though. I look forward to baking again.

My hands have been achy all day today after I wormed the cat yesterday. They have been covered in plasters for most of the day so I can actually use the fingers where the scratches are. The ones where she hooked her claw in the palm of my hand and it got caught are the worst, those and the ones where she got my cuticle.

Round 1, I think, eventually went to me. Rounds 2 & 3 went to Jemima and she retired to the hardest to access corner under my bed and I went away for a while. Rounds 4 & 5 went to me in relatively quick succession after I was reminded of the trick of putting clothes pegs at the back of her neck on the loose skin. Even so, I came away with yet more marks after the last two rounds. We are both rather relieved that this doesn't have to happen again for quite a while.

I have taken most of the plasters off this evening to get them into air contact and have been putting on bactraban. Even so, some of them still itch. Oh, the joys of having a cat.

With the weekend and the playtest of the larp over, I am really quite tired and have been crashing rather early. I almost think that I could go to sleep now. Instead, I think I'll go watch something. Saiyuki Gunlock, perhaps.

Got to cell group tonight for the first time since I was invited about six weeks ago or so. I knew most of the people there already. tamarillow wasn't there, what with being in Australia and all, but I plan to drag her next fortnight. There was food and good conversation and it was more like hanging out with a group of my friends than any other cell group I've ever been in. I guess that's what happens when you actually have things in common with the people you're talking about God with. They're all around my age, I think and they were nice to spend time with.

One of the women there, as it turns out, stopped playing social grade Ultimate about the same time that I really started playing. She used to play for Young & Beautiful & Steve. Steve being her flatmate. The world just got smaller again, especially when it turns out that another one of the women there grew up at No. 172, right next door to our flat. I think I'm going to invite them up for Sunday lunch one day in the future and they can comment on the changes as much as they want.

Had my performance review this week. It went relatively well and I just need to get the team secretary to sign off on my typed up copy to send to the HR Manager in Auckland. I forgot to take the forms home over the weekend and ended up going in early on Monday morning to write it, my review being after morning tea and the last two days of the month always being insanely busy. It was quite nice being the first one in the office - I caught the 7am bus down so was probably there by half past. And since the traffic was bad, hardly anyone arrived until around eight or so, when I would normally get there.

There was an in-house seminar today given by a Customs offical, the one whom our Litigation lawyers mostly deal with. It was really interesting, not so much the idea of sorting 40 tonnes or so of mail a year, but what they find and the excuses they're given. I've looked for Mr Thank You on our system but there aren't any files.

It's been a long day and I need to go to bed. But I have to make bread first.

Last Wednesday my team was informed that due to a couple of the new patent authors needing to be with their team, we were all (apart from one who is going to Lit. anyway) moving from 12 to 14. Next week. Which would be today and tomorrow.

This of course, is the same week as lectures start again, our team lunch, shark week and Earthsea. Plus other things which are currently escaping my memory because my brain is kinda screwy at the moment. Monday was a good day. Today wasn't as bad as yesterday, which is to say that I've been in a better mood and I passed my other terms test with similar results to the last one. I might have gotten more caught up today if I hadn't had a lecture, but by then, I seriously needed to get out of the office for a bit. Yesterday there was just an accumulation of things going wrong.

It's good having my old tape to go to sleep with again. I dubbed it onto a 90 min tape, using tamarillow's stereo. The original is fifteen - twenty minutes a side. Fortunately for her, it's also one that fades into the background fairly easily.

Jenny Craig's went well on Monday. I was dropped down to the next kilojoule level. After finding that eating everything on the list was too much, it's harder than I expected to go down a level. But I'll get used to it again.

I think I'll go watch some Saiyuki now.

Went to work okay. The ankle coped all right - I spent most of the day with it up on my normal chair (the kneely one) while sitting in a normal chair. I only used the crutches a little because they were more annoying than not, although I was glad to have them. Depending on how my ankle feels in the morning (and I'm about to find out what colour it's gone), I will probably leave them home tomorrow.

Workmates were all: "So what have you done to yourself this time?" and expressed both sympathy and the information that this sort of injury can take a year to heal completely. thesane informed me of this last night. I'll contact a nearby physio tomorrow and see what they have to say.

On the plus side, I changed back to my old desk at work today. Back when R. started I shifted across one desk and occasionally complained because my mouse and keyboard both didn't fit on the keyboard tray. Then I got used to it. However, in a discussion with my father on Friday night, it occured to me that despite the non-ergonomic set up of my home computer for the last five years or so, I've never really had any problems with my wrists until recently and that made me think that my desk could be a problem. So I switched back today. Had a few minor twinges in my wrists before I shifted and virtually nothing after, so that has to be a good sign.

Ankle is nearly as pretty colours as it was the time I managed to avoid going headfirst down the stairs at Harbour View Rd by cracking my shin on the concrete stairs and getting a numb patch on my leg for about two years. Dark, purply blue under my ankle, grey purple stretching up my leg and general faint grey/purple over the swelling and darkening on the other side of my foot.

I finished the corset yesteday morning shortly after 7am, was laced into it and went to work. Unsurprisingly, it was very comfortable. Equally unsurprisingly, I was asked how welll I could breather quite a bit. Just wore a red scoop necked knit top underneath it, which was a nice contrast with the blue and my black skirt with ruffles down the back. Laced it tighter at the end of the day to go out and nearly closed the back lacing. Might end up spiral lacing that to stay closed.

Might even end up unpicking all the bindings and making it smaller. I'm fairly sure I could close both sides and still be relatively comfortable.

Still, it's a pretty blue corset and I might even get around to making the dress to go over it one day. Next sewing project (as opposed to embroidery project) is my Daughter's Day dress. I still need to get the linen or calico for the chemise and I want white brocade for the vest cloak, but I have the metres of blue wool for the dress and even have the bodice partially done.

I just want to note that I wouldn't have even started either of these projects without all the help I got from thesane, because all I did was follow her instructions.

Am in the process of procrastinating on my homework, which really does need doing, by cleaning and tidying my room, which equally needs doing because it's about as messy as I can stand. I have almost finished dusting but have a ton of things to put away and a few books to catalogue, I'm fairly sure I have something to beta read and C and I are going to Kapiti Island tomorrow!